Politics of Insult, an Uncivilized Understanding of Democracy in Ghana

Governance and the election of political leaders bring healthy competition into the body politics of any nation that embraces it.

Multi-party democracy, as posited by its framers, aims to foster a competition of ideas, policies, and programmes. This competition allows the electorate to generate ideas, make informed election choices based on these policies, and ultimately determine which political party has the best implementable policies.

Sadly in the last three decades in Ghana, our politics has not only become violent or been taken over by some elements who want to win power even if it means bending the rules of the electoral process but they have introduced abusive language and the culture of insulting opponents to make opponents unpopular. This wrong approach to politics has become the norm.

The two major political parties in Ghana, the NDC and the NPP, seem to have recruited individuals they call their communicators. These individuals possess sharp teeth and are renowned for their abundance of derogatory statements, captions, insult-laden jargon, proverbs, and dehumanizing words.

They often do not defend their parties’ policies and programmes objectively or engage in intellectual discourse, but rather use insults, unhealthy sentences, and their own coined jargon and phrases to paint others black.

Election 2024 is not likely to be different because many of these individuals who do these damages to our emerging democratic process are still around and functioning. However, after each election, Ghanaians continue to become more sophisticated in their election and voting decisions.

Read: Election 2020: Akufo-Addo orders security agencies to deal with troublemakers regardless of party affiliation.

Election 2024 is likely to witness some of these individuals showcasing their destructive strategies for gaining electoral power, thereby undermining the beauty of Ghana’s democratic system of electing political leaders.

Insult Politics: We need to tame Ghana’s uncivilized understanding of democracy. But in an election where the stakes are high, these crook ways of making one’s political party and ideologies popular while demeaning the other most competitive party will take centre stage in Election 2024.

The Peace Council of Ghana would have a lot to do in this regard if this uncivilised understanding of democracy in Ghana were altered for good.

The various political parties have a role to play in removing the politics of insult as Ghana approaches December 7th.

Read: Keeping the Country’s Currency Notes Clean

The NCCE, civil society organisations, the electoral commission, and other stakeholders cannot stand aloof on this critical negative attitude and behaviour. Now is the time to start sensitizing the electorates.

The Politics of Insult is an uncivilised understanding of democracy; let us put an end to it. The battle for political power is based solely on programs and policies, and our vision for a prosperous Ghana where opportunities are created for the present generation is met. Doing this also requires plans that consider posterity, and it takes visionary leaders to do this.

This way, we can focus on how best to convince the electorate to give us their mandate to turn the political, economic, and social fortunes of this nation around.

Let us all allow our emerging democracy to mature and move beyond insults, acrimony, and tagging opponents with derogatory names. This act must also be avoided by the voting populace.

Social media must not be an avenue for Ghanaians to hide behind Facebook and Twitter Accounts and to pour out insults and derogatory comments that do not add any value to the nation of Ghana.

We all have a role to play, and you are the next on the list to do the right thing.

Source: Wisdom Hammond | electionsinghana.com